The present application claims priority upon Japanese Patent Application Nos. 2000-369904 and 2000-369905 filed on Dec. 5, 2000 respectively, and Japanese Patent Application No. 2001-367075 filed on Nov. 30, 2001, the contents of which are herein incorporated by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a printing apparatus and an ink cartridge therefor. In particular, it relates to a printing apparatus where a plurality of ink cartridges are detachably mountable, and to an ink cartridge used for such a printing apparatus.
2. Related Art
As one type of a printing apparatus such as an ink jet printer, there is a printing apparatus with a plurality of detachably mountable ink cartridges. Each ink cartridge contains the respective ink, and the printing apparatus executes the printing operation with the supply of ink from the mounted ink cartridge.
With such a printing apparatus, it is necessary to avoid a printing process being interrupted when there is no ink stored in the ink cartridge during printing. From the above perspectives, a control portion provided in a printing apparatus body manages a used amount or residual quantity of ink. Further, there is provided a nonvolatile memory storing information showing the used amount or residual quantity of ink in the ink cartridge. This nonvolatile memory may not contain a lot of information due to miniaturization and decrease of cost. Therefore, after storing information showing the used amount or residual quantity of ink in the memory of the printing apparatus body, only appropriate information is written in the non-volatile memory provided in the ink cartridge.
However, in a case a power supply is suddenly forcedly to be cut off due to such as a plug accidentally disconnecting from a socket or for some other reason, information showing a used amount or residual quantity of ink saved in a memory of a printing apparatus body is eliminated. When such a situation arises, the printing apparatus may not correctly manage the used amount or residual quantity of ink, and there will exist possibility of an occurrence of an inconvenience such as running out of ink during printing.
The present invention is made in view of the relevant illustrated and other objects, and one object is to provide a printing apparatus which may effectively manage information related to each ink cartridge, and to an ink cartridge for the printing apparatus.
The objects and the features thereof except for the above in the present invention, are made clear by the description of this specification in reference to the appended drawings.
A first aspect of the present invention to accomplish the above objects is a printing apparatus having a cartridge mounting portion where a plurality of ink cartridges with elements into which information may be written are detachably mountable, an accumulating means for accumulating a discharge amount of ink discharged for every ink cartridge mounted on the cartridge mounting portion, and a writing member for writing information into the element, in which the writing member writes information into one or a plurality of elements in at least one ink cartridge selected according to an accumulated result of the accumulating means, out of the plurality of ink cartridges mounted on the cartridge mounting portion.
Further, another aspect of the present invention is an ink cartridge which can contain ink and is detachable from a printing apparatus body, comprising an element into which information can be written; and the information including information showing a used amount or residual quantity of ink contained in the ink cartridge, and information for determining a writing timing of the information showing the used amount or residual quantity into the ink cartridge.